1. Pretty Girl's Going To Ruin My Life (Again) (3:37)
2. Superman (3:00)
3. Burning Red And Blue (5:38)
4. Those Day Are Gone, And My Heart Is Breaking (4:04)
5. Brace Yourself (2:45)
6. Brooklyn Girl, You're Going To Be My Bride (3:10)
7. Certain Circles (2:43)
8. Small Thing (6:09)
9. Laurie, Don't Go (2:40)
10. Ramona (2:47)
11. Dark Place (1:46)
12. Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still (3:29)

Barton Carroll writes like a troubled man. The songs on The Lost One, his second album on Birmingham-based Skybucket Records, are all about downtrodden men nursing dark thoughts like whiskey, ruminating over marriages, sex, children, jobs, friends, life. "Hair's fallin' out and my back's got a pain," he sings on opener "Pretty Girl's Going to Ruin My Life (Again)" (that parenthetical aside stings like a punchline). "I've been drinking my scotch in my truck in the rain/ I think it's a fine way to spend the day." Like Freedy Johnston, to whom he bears more than a passing resemblance, Carroll writes in character, filling his songs with the kind of everyday people you might pass on the street, with no bigger story than the gradual onset of disappointment and regret.
On the elegantly epistolary "Those Days Are Gone, and My Heart Is Breaking", which could be a male response to Michelle Shocked's "Anchorage", a man writes a letter to an old friend, catching up on the "years between us," including a failed marriage, an estranged son, and a series of go-nowhere jobs. "I guess the damage is done," he sings, "and there's no way I can fake it." Like most of The Lost One, the song works because Carroll never inflates his characters' circumstances beyond the mundane and possibly hopeless.
"There's a mean streak in me," Carroll sings on "Those Days Are Gone", but as dark as these songs may be, Carroll himself sounds like a nice, good-humored guy, maybe someone you'd like to have a beer with. He has a high-pitched voice that recalls Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and he enunciates perfectly with no trace of an accent (the North Carolina native moved to the Pacific Northwest years ago). As such, he doesn't inhabit these characters, but he certainly identifies with their predicaments and their working-class roots. On "Brooklyn Girl, You're Going to Be My Bride", the album's funniest track, he comes off like a good-hearted blue-collar suitor trailing a pretty Vampire Weekend fan: "I know she's drowning in boys and a lot of hipster noise," he sings.
When Carroll missteps, the cracks become particularly noticeable, as on "Laurie, Don't Go", which relies on lyrical clichés to force a clunky rhyme scheme: "Don't take my boy," Carroll sings. "What is this ploy? He's my only joy." Carroll claims "Small Thing", which appeared on his 2006 album Love & War, is about the Soviet occupation of Berlin, but history makes the song sound completely out of proportion with the rest of this studiously life-size album.
Ultimately, the mean streak in his lyrics and the softness of his voice aren't as irreconcilable as you might think. For the most part, he sells these characters as people he's had beers with-- an impression bolstered by his modest, but by no means mild-mannered folk-rock sound. Carroll, who has played with Crooked Fingers, Azure Ray, Dolorean, and Micah P. Hinson, bases all the songs on acoustic guitar, but rustles up harmonica, organ, and trumpet when the mood hits and makes the most of his full band on the organ-heavy "Ramona" and the stomping "Dark Place". An ominous slide guitar offsets his falsetto vocals on "Burning Red and Blue", and a rickety trap set on the traditional folk song "Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still" sounds like the creaking boards of an empty house, as if the owner of that bright smile were literally a ghost. Putting his songwriting at the forefront, the straightforwardness of the arrangements make his character sketches sound believably plainspoken instead of clever. The Lost One is a fine way to spend 42 minutes, and probably best served with scotch